The present invention relates to toys and more particularly a unique puzzle that is challenging for the user and which will give the user great enjoyment in solving the puzzle.
Puzzles have a long history. The ancient Minoans on the Mediterranean island of Crete were noted for a maze that had at its center the mythical beast known as the Minotaur. One of the most famous puzzles in ancient times was the Gordian knot. When challenged to unravel this conundrum Alexander the great took a unique approach and cut the knot with his knife.
There has always been an interest in devising xe2x80x9cproblemsxe2x80x9d for the purpose of posing a challenge or providing intellectual pleasure. Similarly, people have always enjoyed the mental stimulation and challenge of solving problems. Many early puzzles could be divided into two types those involving the manipulation of objects, and those requiring computation. The first group includes for example, such well known puzzles as the xe2x80x9cdecanting and difficult crossingsxe2x80x9d problems. A typical example of the former is how to measure out one quart of a liquid if only an eight-, a five-, and a three-quart measure are available. Difficult crossings problems are exemplified by the dilemma of a farmer with a fox, a chicken and a bag of corn. They are trying to cross a stream in a boat that will hold only two items. The fox and chicken cannot be left alone nor can the chicken and the corn. Many variants of both types of problems have appeared over the years.
Another type of puzzle that has been popular involves the manipulation of geometric shapes and forms. One such type of puzzle is known as the Soma Cubes which were developed by Piet Hein of Denmark. These puzzles involved irregular shapes that can be formed by combining three or four congruent cubes joined at their faces. These congruent cubes could be put together to form a larger cube. There were seven such shapes, called Soma Cubes. No two shapes were alike, although the fifth and sixth are mirror images of each other. Many solid shapes could be formed from the seven Soma Cubes, shapes resembling, for example, a sofa, a chair, a castle, a tunnel, a pyramid, and so on. Even the assembling of the seven basic pieces into a large cube can be done in more than 230 essentially different ways.
There are a wide variety of puzzles involving colored square tiles and colored cubes. In one, the object is to arrange the 24 three-color patterns, including repetitions, that can be obtained by subdividing square tiles diagonally, using three different colors, into a rectangle so that each pair of touching edges is the same color and the entire border of the rectangle is the same color. A commercial colored-cube puzzle known as Instant Insanity, consisting of four cubes, each of which has its faces painted white, red, green, and blue in a definite scheme. The puzzle is to assemble the cubes into a prism such that all four colors appear on each of the four long faces of the prism. Since each cube admits of 24 different orientations, there are 82,944 possible prismatic arrangements; of these only two are the required solutions.
More recently, a few years ago the Rubik""s cube was a popular puzzle. The cube appears to be composed of 27 smaller cubes, or cubelets; in its initial state, each of the six faces of the cube is made up of nine cubelet faces all of the same color. In the commercial versions of the puzzle, an internal system of pivots allows any layer of nine cubelets to be rotated with respect to the rest, so that successive rotations about the three axes cause the cubelet faces to become scrambled. The challenge of restoring a scrambled cube to its original configuration is formidable, inasmuch as more than 1019 states can be reached from a given starting condition.
The present invention is directed to a unique puzzle that is made up of twelve generally identical puzzle piece that interconnect to form a cube. Each of the puzzle pieces has center member. The center member has a first surface and a second surface. The first surface and the second surface each have four long edges and four short edges. Two long edges meet to form an angle at one of their ends. At the other end of each edge the edges meet and forms an angle with short edge. Each of the short edges meet to form an angle. Extending outwardly from each surface are four legs. Twelve puzzle pieces intermesh to form a cube. One feature of the cube of the preferred embodiment of the present invention is that the cube is capable of balancing on any one of its corners.